Business success and a high level of organizational performance are usually typical of the companies with a healthy internal environment and a harmonious organizational culture. At the same time, an unhealthy internal climate can lead to a variety of problems that are likely to spread to multiple levels and produce adverse effects on a variety of systems and operations. As a result, it is critical for the organizations’ leaders to monitor the environment on a regular basis, assess its state, and identify the factors that contribute to the improvement and deterioration of the internal climate in the organization in general as well as in its separate parts.
The focus of this paper is the organizational culture and its multiple components. First of all, this report will define a healthy organizational culture and how it is related to organizational productivity. Secondly, the paper will provide a description of the impact that emotional, psychological, and organizational stressors can produce on organizational culture and affect employees’ productivity and their relationships with one another. Further, using the Western State University case study, the stressors affecting the organization in it will be named and analyzed in terms of their impact on the university’s performance. Finally, the approaches helping to address the issues will be proposed.
Organizational Culture and Organizational Productivity
OASAS (n.d.) defines organizational culture as an organization’s personality that includes values, behaviors, manners, and norms practiced within it. In that way, organizational culture represents the internal climate of an organization that needs to be maintained and regulated because it is tightly connected to the performance of an organization. As pointed out by OASAS (n.d.), healthy organizational culture serves as the source of a strategic framework that helps the organization to derive its core values from its vision and mission and enforce a healthy culture based on them.
To be more precise, the major set of factors that need to be cultivated in a healthy organizational culture include fairness and equitable treatment of all the employees, open and ongoing communication between the workers and their leaders, promotion of the shared values, and personal and professional development of all the affected individuals (OASAS, n. d.). Some of the other traits associated with a healthy organizational culture are integrity and commitment, the pursuit of self-improvement, the ability and willingness to learn from failures and negative experiences, the acceptance of accountability and responsibility for the organizational performance as well as those of separate teams and departments.
Emotional, Psychological, and Organizational Stressors
As noted by Shikieri and Musa (2012), in their research conducted at a Sudanese University, according to the Demand-Control theory, it is critical that the emotional, psychological, and organizational requirements of the jobs match the capabilities of the employed individuals. In the cases when such demands of the jobs differ from the abilities of the people (the jobs are too demanding or too undemanding), it is likely that the persons would end up having occupational stress and low job satisfaction. Another theory mentioned by Shikieri and Musa (2012) is Person-Environment theory that emphasizes that the requirements of the environments and the individual abilities of the employees should not be viewed as separate impacts that serve as the drivers of work-related stress; it is the correlation and mutual compatibility of the two types of factors that create harmony or lack thereof in the workplace.
In addition, the research conducted by Shikieri and Musa (2012) indicated that there could be a variety of psychological, emotional, and organizational stressors at the workplace. In particular, the researchers named role conflict and ambiguity, lack of authority or opportunities to participate in the decision-making process, lack of opportunity for promotion and development, and unsatisfactory working conditions (Shikieri & Musa, 2012). In fact, Finney, Stergiopoulos, Hensel, Bonato, and Dewa (2013) detected the same contributing factors even though they overviewed the type of organization that differed a lot from a higher educational institution.
Moreover, Sauter, Hurrell, Murphy, and Levi (n.d.) specified that among the other important factors that can contribute to the development of work-related stress, there is recognition and social support. This is a powerful motivator and a driver of emotional job satisfaction. When it comes to the organizational factors that can affect the level of workplace stress, they are improper leadership and management style, the quality and quantity of tasks, inadequate decision-making of the leaders, and work with untrained peers or individuals unsuited for their jobs, to name a few (Mirela & Mădălina-Adriana, 2011).
As a result of the combination of psychological, emotional, and organizational stressors, a set of adverse work-related outcomes may occur in the affected organizations; some of them are a high rate of absenteeism, turnover, poor quality control, apathy, occupational accidents, and malpractice, among others.
Stressors in the Case Study
The vast majority of the stressors mentioned in the research papers overviewed in the previous section can be found in the case study of the Western State University, where a new Registrar (Martha Gomez) has been appointed to solve the problems that occurred due to the unprofessional behavior of the previous Registrar.
To be more precise, the three departments answering to the Registrar have been demonstrating poor performance because each of them is facing a series of emotional, psychological, and organizational issues. In particular, the major stressor of organizational nature is the lack of coordination between the three departments that have caused a level of disengagement, poor control of the quality of the performed services, and the chaotic and unproductive work that was noticed by both the employees (the ones who come from the three departments and the ones who occupy the other related positions) and the students – the main recipients of the services. In addition, one of the department Directors seems to be highly unwilling to cooperate with the new Registrar, and this tendency could result in the increase in tension between that department and the leader raising the level of organizational stress for all the involved parties.
As for the psychological stressors, one of them is the inappropriate leadership style of the previous Registrar, who was intolerant of errors and thus created the psychological pressure that forced the departments to disguise and underreport their mistakes and failures. Moreover, another case of the style of leadership that generates stress is that of the Assistant Director of one of the departments, which are excessively authoritative and thus depowers his subordinates. Besides, the cases of emotional stressors can be detected at the department of Enrollment Services, whose Director has been forcing her religious views on the employees, making them feel intimidated to express their dissatisfaction or disagreement. The latter incident refers to a lack of social support and recognition in the workplace.
Proposed Solution Strategies and Recommendations
First of all, the leaders of the three departments seem to be some of the major sources of emotional, psychological, and organizational stressors for their workers. In that way, it is recommended that the new Registrar begins her work with the conversations and the evaluation of each of the Directors and Assistant Directors. In particular, Martha could put all of them on probation and see how they perform within the nearest quarter in order to assess whether or not they could change their work attitudes and behaviors and address the issues that depend on them. In case if the Directors demonstrate that they cannot change their destructive behaviors, a change of leadership is advised. In regard to the underreported errors, Martha is to establish trusting relations with the employees and make them understand that her treatment of mistakes is going to be constructive but not emotional. Finally, once these issues are dealt with, the Registrar is to focus on the re-creation of the coordinated set of systems and operations run by the three departments in order to eliminate the ambiguity and overlapping of their roles and duties.
Conclusion
To sum up, Western State University has a set of issues caused by the impacts of the emotional, psychological, and organizational stressors. Many of these stressors seem to be coming from the leaders of the three departments answering to the Registrar. As a result, the main objective of the new person in this position is to assess the suitability of the department leaders for their position, identify the changes they are required to make in order to address the existing problems, and detect whether or not the leaders are capable of changing their workplace behaviors and attitudes.
References
Finney, C., Stergiopoulos, E., Hensel, J., Bonato, S., & Dewa, C. S. (2013). Organizational stressors associated with job stress and burnout in correctional officers: A systematic review. BMC Public Health, 13(82), 1-13.
Mirela, B. & Mădălina-Adriana, C. (2011). Organizational stress and its impact on work performance. Annals of the University of Oradea, Economic Science Series, 333-337.
OASAS. (n. d.). Creating a healthy organizational culture. Web.
Sauter, S. L., Hurrell J. J., Murphy, L. R., & Levi, L. (n.d.). Psychosocial and organizational factors. Web.
Shikieri, A. B. & Musa, H. A. (2012). Factors associated with occupational stress and their effects on organizational performance in a Sudanese University. Creative Education, 3(1), 134-144.